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Spinoza 


Copyright,  1903,  by  Elbert  Hubbard. 


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SPINOZA 


MEN  are  so  made  as  to  resent  nothing  more  impatiently  than 
to  be  treated  as  criminal  on  account  of  opinions  which  they 
deem  true,  and  charged  as  guilty  for  simply  what  wakes  their  affec- 
tion to  God  and  men.  Hence,  laws  about  opinions  are  aimed  not 
at  the  base  but  at  the  noble,  and  tend  not  to  restrain  the  evil-minded 
but  rather  to  irritate  the  good,  and  cannot  be  enforced  without  great 
peril  to  the  Government.  ***  What  evil  can  be  imagined  greater  for  a 
State,  than  that  honorable  men,  because  they  have  thoughts  of  their 
own  and  cannot  act  a  lie,  are  sent  as  culprits  into  exile!  What  more 
baneful  than  that  men,  for  no  guilt  or  wrong-doing,  but  for  the  gen- 
erous largeness  of  their  mind,  should  be  taken  for  enemies  and  led 
off  to  death,  and  that  the  torture-bed,  the  terror  of  the  bad,  should 
become,  to  the  signal  shame  of  authority,  the  finest  stage  for  the 
public  spectacle  of  endurance  and  virtue ! 

—BENEDICT  SPINOZA. 


SPINOZA 


HE  word  philosophy  means  the  love  of 
truth:  "philo,"  love;  '«soph,"  truth; 
or,  i^  you  prefer,  the  love  of  that  which 
is  reasonable  and  right.  Philosophy  re- 
fers directly  to  the  life  of  man — how 
shall  we  live  so  to  get  the  most  out  of 
this  little  Earth-Journey  I 
Life  is  our  heritage — we  all  have  so 
much  vitality  at  our  disposal — what  shall 
we  do  with  it  ? 

Truth  can  be  proved  in  just  one  way, 
and  no  other — that  is,  by  living  it.  You 
only  know  what  is  good  by  trying. 
Truth,  for  us,  is  that  which  brings  good 
results — happiness  or  reasonable  con- 
tent, health,  peace  &  prosperity.  These 
things  are  all  relative — none  are  final, 
and  they  are  only  good  as  they  are  mixed 
in  right  proportion  with  other  things. 
Oxygen,  we  say,  is  life,  but  it  is  also 
death,  for  it  attacks  every  living  thing 
with  pitiless  persistency.  Hydrogen  is 
good,  but  it  makes  the  very  hottest  fire 
known,  and  may  explode  if  you  try  to 
confine  it. 

Prosperity  is  excellent,  but  too  much  is 
very  dangerous  to  most  folks ;  &  to  seek 
happiness  as  a  final  aim  is  like  loving 
love  as  a  business — the  end  is  desolation, 


I20 SPINOZA 

death.  Good  health  is  best  secured  &  retained  by  those 
who  are  not  anxious  about  health.  Absolute  good  can 
never  be  known,  for  always  and  forever  creeps  in  the 
suspicion  that  if  we  had  acted  differently  a  better 
result  might  have  followed. 

And  that  which  is  good  for  one  is  not  necessarily  good 
for  another. 

But  there  are  certain  general  rules  of  conduct  which 
apply  to  all  men,  and  to  sum  these  up  and  express  them 
in  words  is  the  business  of  the  philosopher.  As  all  men 
live  truth,  in  degree,  and  all  men  express  some  truth  in 
language,  so  to  that  extent  all  men  are  philosophers, 
but  by  common  assent,  we  give  the  title  only  to  the 
men  who  make  other  men  think  fbr  themselves. 
■Whistler  refers  to  Velasquez  as  "a  painter's  painter." 
John  "Wesley  said,  "  No  man  is  worthy  to  be  called  a 
teacher,  unless  he  be  a  teacher  of  teachers."  The  great 
writer  is  the  one  who  inspires  writers.  And  in  these 
papers  I  will  not  refer  to  a  man  as  a  philosopher  un- 
less he  has  inspired  philosophers. 

Preachers  and  priests  in  the  employ  of  a  denomination 
are  attorneys  for  the  defense.  God  is  not  found  in  a  the- 
ological seminary,  for  very  seldom  is  the  seminary 
seminal — it  galvanizes  the  dead  rather  than  vitalizes 
the  germs  of  thought  in  the  living.  No  man  understands 
theology — it  is  not  intended  to  be  understood;  it  is 
merely  believed.  Most  colleges  are  places  where  is 
taught  the  gentle  art  of  sophistication,  and  memorizing 
the  theories  of  great  men  gone  passes  for  knowledge. 


SPINOZA 121 

G[  "Words  are  fluid  and  change  their  meaning  with  the 
years  and  according  to  the  mind  and  mood  of  the 
hearer.  A  word  means  all  you  read  into  it,  and  nothing 
more.  The  word  "soph"  once  had  a  high  and  honor- 
able distinction,  but  now  it  is  used  to  punt  a  moral, 
and  the  synonym  of  sophomore  is  soft. 
Originally  the  sophist  was  a  lover  of  truth ;  then  he  be- 
came a  lover  of  words  that  concealed  truth,  and  the 
chief  end  of  his  existence  was  to  balance  a  feather  on 
his  nose  and  keep  three  balls  in  the  air  for  the  astonish- 
ment and  admiration  of  the  bystanders. 
Education  is  something  else. 

Education  is  growth,  development,  life  in  abundance, 
creation. 

"We  grow  only  through  exercise.  The  faculties  v/e  use 
become  strong  and  those  we  fail  to  use  are  taken  away 
from  us. 

This  exercise  of  our  powers  through  which  growth  is 
attained  affords  the  finest  gratification  that  mortals 
know.  To  think,  reason,  weigh,  sift,  decide  and  act — 
this  is  life.  It  means  health,  sanity  and  length  of  days. 
Those  live  longest  who  live  most. 

The  end  of  college  education  to  the  majority  of  students 
and  psirents  is  to  secure  a  degree,  and  a  degree  is  val- 
uable only  to  the  man  who  needs  it.  Visiting  the  office 
of  the  "Outlook,"  a  weekly,  religious  newspaper,  I 
noticed  that  the  titles.  Rev.,  Prof,  and  Dr.,  and  the  de- 
grees, M.  D.,  D.  D.,  LL.D.,  Ph.  D.,  were  carefully  used 
by  the  clerks  in  addressing  envelopes  and  wrappers. 


122 SPINOZA 

And  I  said  to  the  manager,  ♦*  Why  this  misuse  of  time 
and  effort  ? — the  ink  thus  wasted  should  be  sold  and 
the  proceeds  given  to  the  poorl  "  And  the  man  replied, 
'♦  To  omit  these  titles  and  degrees  would  cost  us  half 
our  subscription  list."  And  so  I  assume  that  man  is  a 
calculating  animal,  not  a  thinking  one. 
And  the  point  of  this  sermonette  is  that  truth  is  not 
monopolized  by  universities  and  colleges ;  nor  must  we 
expect  much  from  those  who  parade  degrees  and  make 
professions.  It  is  one  thing  to  love  truth  and  it  is  an- 
other thing  to  lust  after  honors. 

The  larger  life,  the  life  of  love,  health,  self-sufficiency, 
usefulness  and  expanding  power — this  life  in  abundance, 
is  often  taught  best  out  of  the  mouths  of  babes  and 
sucklings.  It  is  not  esoteric,  nor  hidden  in  secret  form- 
ulas, nor  locked  in  languages  old  and  strange. 
No  one  can  compute  how  much  the  bulwarked  learned 
ones  have  blocked  the  path  of  wisdom.  Socrates,  the 
barefoot  philosopher,  did  more  good  than  all  the  Soph- 
ists with  their  schools.  Diogenes,  who  lived  in  a  tub, 
searched  in  vain  for  an  honest  man,  owned  nothing 
but  a  blanket  and  a  bowl,  and  threw  the  bowl  away 
when  he  sa^v  a  boy  drinking  out  of  his  hand,  even  yet 
makes  men  think,  and  so  blesses  and  beneRts  the  race. 
Jesus  of  Nazareth,  with  no  place  to  lay  his  tired  head, 
associating  with  publicans  and  sinners,  and  choosing 
his  closest  companions  from  among  ignorant  fishermen, 
still  lives  in  the  affections  of  millions  of  people,  a 
molding  force  for  good  untold.  Friedrich  Froebel,  who 


SPINOZA 123 

first  preached  the  propensity  to  play  as  a  pedagogic 
dynamo,  as  the  tides  of  the  sea  could  be  used  to  turn 
the  countless  wheels  of  trade,  is  yet  only  partially  ac- 
cepted, but  has  influenced  every  teacher  in  Christendom 
and  stamped  his  personality  upon  the  walls  of  school- 
rooms unnumbered.  Then  comes  Richard  Wagner,  the 
political  outcast,  \vriting  from  exile  the  music  that 
serves  as  a  mine  for  much  of  our  modern  composing, 
marching  down  the  centuries  to  the  solemn  chant  of 
his  "Pilgrim's  Chorus";  William  Morris,  Oxford  grad- 
uate and  uncouth  working  man  in  blouse  and  overalls, 
arrested  in  the  streets  of  London  for  haranguing  crowds 
on  Socialism,  let  go  with  a  warning,  on  suspended 
sentence — cancelled  only  by  death — making  his  mark 
upon  the  walls  of  every  well-furnished  house  in  Eng- 
land or  America;  Jean  Francois  Millet,  starved  out  in 
art-loving  Paris,  his  pictures  refused  at  the  Salon, 
living  next  door  to  abject  want  in  Barbizon,  dubbed  the 
"wild  man  of  the  woods,"  dead  and  turned  to  dust,  his 
pictures  commanding  such  sums  as  Paris  never  before 
paid;  "Walt  Whitman,  issuing  his  book  at  his  own  ex- 
pense, publishers  having  refused  it,  this  book  excluded 
from  the  mails,  as  Wanamaker  immortalized  himself 
by  serving  a  like  sentence  on  Tolstoy — Walt  Whitman, 
riding  on  top  of  a  Broadway  'bus  all  day,  happy  in  the 
great  solitude  of  bustling  city  streets,  sending  his  bar- 
baric yawp  down  the  ages,  singing  paeans  to  those  who 
fail,  chants  to  Death  —  strong  deliverer  —  and  giving 
courage  to  a  fear-stricken  world ;  Thoreau,  declining  to 


124 SPINOZA 

pay  the  fee  of  five  dollars  for  his  Harvard  diploma  "be- 
cause it  was  n't  worth  the  price,"  later  refusing  to  pay 
poll-tax  and  sent  to  jail,  thus  missing,  possibly,  the 
chance  of  finding  that  specimen  of  victoria  regia  on 
Concord  River — Thoreau,  most  virile  of  all  the  thinkers 
of  his  day,  inspiring  Emerson,  the  one  man  America 
could  illest  spare;  Spinoza,  the  intellectual  hermit, 
asking  nothing,  and  giving  everything — all  these  worked 
their  philosophy  up  into  life  and  are  the  type  of  men 
who  jostle  the  world  out  of  its  ruts — creators  all,  one 
v/ith  Deity,  sons  of  God,  saviors  of  the  race. 


WASHINGTON  IRVING  once  spoke  of  Spain 
as  the  Paradise  of  Jev/s.  But  it  must  be  borne 
in  mind  that  he  wrote  the  words  in  Granada, 
which  was  essentially  a  Moorish  province.  The  Moors 
and  the  Jews  are  both  Semitic  in  origin — they  trace 
back  to  a  common  ancestry.  It  w^as  the  Moslem  Moors 
that  welcomed  the  Jews  in  both  Venetia  and  Spain, 
not  the  Christians.  The  wealth,  energy  and  practical 
business  sense  of  the  Jews  recommended  them  to  the 
grandees  of  Leon,  Aragon  and  Castile.  To  the  Jews 
they  committed  their  exchequer,  the  care  of  their 
health,  the  setting  of  their  jewels  and  the  fashioning  of 
their  finery.  In  this  genial  atmosphere  many  of  the 
Jews  grew  great  in  the  study  of  science,  literature, 
history,  philosophy  and  all  that  makes  for  mental  bet- 
terment. They  increased  in  numbers,  in  opulence  and 


SPINOZA 125 

culture.  Their  thrift  and  success  set  them  apart  as  a 
mark  for  hate  and  envy. 

It  was  a  period  of  ominous  peace,  of  treacherous  re- 
pose jT  iff 

A  senseless  and  fanatical  cry  ■went  up,  that  the  Moors 
— the  infidels — must  be  driven  from  Spain.  The  iniqui- 
ties and  inhuman  barbarities  visited  upon  the  Mo- 
hammedan Moors  would  make  a  book  in  itself,  but  let  it 
go  at  this :  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  drove  the  Moham- 
medans from  Spain.  In  the  struggle,  the  Jews  were 
overlooked — and  anyway,  Christians  do  not  repudiate 
the  Old  Testament,  and  if  the  Jews  would  accept  Christ, 
why,  they  could  remain ! 

It  looked  easy  to  the  gracious  King  and  Queen  of  Spain 
— it  was  really  generous :  two  religions  were  unneces- 
sary, and  Christianity  was  beautiful  and  right.  If  the 
Jews  would  become  Catholics,  all  barriers  v/ould  be 
removed — the  Jews  would  be  recognized  as  citizens 
and  every  walk  of  life  would  be  open  to  them. 
This  manifesto  to  the  Jews  is  still  quoted  by  Church- 
men to  show  the  excellence,  tolerance,  patience  and 
love  of  the  Spanish  rulers.  Turn  your  synagogues  over 
to  the  Catholics — come  and  be  one  with  us — we  will 
all  worship  the  one  God  together — come,  these  open 
arms  invite — no  distinctions — no  badges — no  prefer- 
ences— no  prejudices — come  I 

In  quoting  the  edict  it  is  not  generally  stated  that  the 
Jew^s  were  given  thirty  days  to  make  the  change. 
The  Jews  who  loved  their  faith  fled;  the  weak  sue- 


126 SPINOZA 

cumbed,  or  pretended  to.  If  a  Jew  wished  to  flee  the 
country  he  could,  but  he  must  leave  all  of  his  property 
behind.  This  caused  many  to  remain  and  profess 
Christianity,  only  awaiting  a  time  when  their  property 
could  be  turned  into  gold  or  jewels  and  be  borne  upon 
the  person.  This  fondness  for  concrete  wealth  is  a  race 
instinct  implanted  in  the  Jewish  mind  by  the  inbred 
thought  that  possibly  to-morrow  he  must  fly. 
After  attending  service  at  a  Catholic  Church,  Jews 
would  go  home  and  in  secret  read  the  Talmud  and  in 
whispers  chant  the  Psalms  of  David. 
Laws  were  passed  making  such  action  a  penal  offense 
— spies  were  everywhere.  No  secret  can  be  kept  long, 
and  in  the  Province  of  Seville  over  two  thousand  Jews 
were  hanged  or  burned  in  a  single  year.  When  Ferdi- 
nand and  Isabella  gave  Torquemada,  Deza  and  Lucio 
orders  to  make  good  Catholics  of  all  Jews,  they  had 
not  the  faintest  idea  what  would  be  the  result.  Every 
Jew  that  was  hurried  to  the  stake  was  first  stripped  of 
his  property. 

No  Jew  was  safe,  especially  if  he  was  rich — his  sin- 
cerity or  insincerity  had  really  little  to  do  in  the  matter. 
The  prisons  were  full,  the  fagots  crackled,  the  streets 
ran  blood,  and  all  in  the  name  of  the  gentle  Christ. 
Then  for  a  time  the  severity  relaxed,  for  the  horror  had 
spent  itself.  But  early  in  the  Seventeenth  Century  the 
same  edicts  were  again  put  forth. 

Fortunately,  priesthood  had  tried  its  mailed  hand  on 
the  slow  and  sluggish  Dutch,  with  the  result  that  the 


SPINOZA     127 

Spaniards  were  driven  from  the  Netherlands.  Holland 
was  the  home  of  freedom.  Amsterdam  became  a  Mecca 
for  the  oppressed.  The  Jews  flocked  thither,  and  among 
others  who  in  1631  landed  on  the  quay  was  a  young 
Jew  by  the  name  of  Michael  D'  Espinoza.  With  him 
was  a  Moorish  girl  that  he  had  rescued  from  the  clutch 
of  a  Spanish  grandee,  in  whose  house  she  had  been 
kept  a  prisoner. 

By  a  happy  accident,  this  beautiful  girl  of  seventeen 
had  escaped  from  her  tormentors  and  was  huddling, 
sobbing,  in  an  alley  as  the  young  Jew  came  hurrying  by 
on  his  way  to  the  ship  that  ^vas  to  bear  him  to  freedom. 
It  was  near  day-dawn — there  was  no  time  to  lose — the 
young  man  only  knew  that  the  girl,  like  himself,  was 
in  imminent  peril.  A  small  boat  waited  near — soon  they 
were  safely  secreted  in  the  hold  of  the  ship.  Before  sun- 
down the  tide  had  carried  the  ship  to  sea  and  Portugal 
was  but  a  dark  line  on  the  horizon. 
Other  refugees  were  on  board  the  boat,  they  came  from 
their  hiding  places — and  the  second  day  out  a  refugee 
rabbi  called  a  meeting  on  deck.  It  was  a  solemn  service 
of  thanksgiving  and  the  songs  of  Zion  were  sung,  the 
first  time  for  some  in  many  months,  and  only  friends 
and  the  great,  sobbing,  salt  sea  listened. 
The  tears  of  the  Moorish  girl  were  now  dried — the 
horror  of  the  future  had  gone  with  the  black  memories 
of  the  past.  Other  women,  not  quite  so  poor,  contrib- 
uted to  her  wardrobe,  and  there  and  then,  after  she 
had   been  accepted  into  the   Jewish  faith,  she  and 


128 SPINOZA 

Michael  D'  Espinoza,  aged  twenty-two,  were  married. 
Q  The  ship  arrived  at  Amsterdam  in  safety.  In  a  year, 
on  November  24th,  1632,  in  a  little  stone  house  that 
still  stands  on  the  canal  bank,  was  born  Benedict 
Spinoza. 


BENEDICT  SPINOZA  was  brought  up  in  the 
faith  and  culture  of  his  people.  Beyond  his  re- 
ligious training  at  the  synagogue,  there  was  a 
Jewish  High  School  at  Amsterdam  which  he  attended. 
This  school  might  compare  very  favorably  with  our 
modern  schools,  in  that  it  included  a  certain  degree  of 
manual  training.  Beyond  this  he  had  received  special 
instructions  from  several  learned  rabbis.  In  matters 
of  true  education,  the  Jews  have  ever  been  in  advance 
of  the  Gentile  world — they  bring  their  children  up  to  be 
useful.  The  father  of  Benedict  was  a  maker  of  lenses  for 
spectacles,  and  at  this  trade  the  boy  was  very  early  set 
to  work.  Again  and  again  in  the  writings  of  Spinoza, 
we  find  the  argument  that  every  man  should  have  a 
trade  and  earn  his  living  with  his  hands,  not  by  writing, 
speaking  or  philosophizing.  If  you  can  earn  a  living  at 
your  trade,  you  thus  make  your  mind  free. 
This  early  idea  of  usefulness  led  to  a  sympathy  with 
another  religious  body,  of  which  there  were  quite  a 
number  of  members  in  Holland :  the  Mennonites.  This 
sect  was  founded  by  Menno  Simons,  a  Frieslander,  con- 
temporary of  Luther,  only  this  man  swung  on  further 


SPINOZA 129 

from  Catholicism  than  Luther  and  declared  that  a  paid 
priesthood  was  what  made  all  the  trouble.  Religion  to 
him  was  a  matter  of  individual  inspiration.  When  an 
institution  was  formed,  built  on  man's  sense  of  relation 
with  his  Maker,  property  purchased,  and  paid  priests 
employed,  instantly  there  was  a  pollution  of  the  well 
of  life.  It  became  a  money-making  scheme,  and  a  grand 
clutch  for  place  and  power  followed :  it  really  ceased 
to  be  religion  at  all,  so  long  as  we  define  religion  in  its 
spiritual  sense.  "  A  priest,"  said  Menno,  *'  is  a  man  who 
thrives  on  the  sacred  relations  that  exist  bet^veen  man 
and  God,  and  is  little  better  than  a  person  who  would 
live  on  the  love  emotions  of  men  and  women." 
This  certainly  was  bold  language,  but  to  be  exact,  it 
was  persecution  that  forced  the  expression.  The  Catho- 
lics had  placed  an  interdict  on  all  services  held  by  Prot- 
estant pastors,  and  the  deprivation  proved  to  Menno 
that  paid  preaching  and  costly  churches  and  trappings 
were  really  not  necessary  at  all.  Man  could  go  to  God 
without  them,  and  pray  in  secret.  Spirituality  is  not 
dependent  on  either  church  or  priest. 
The  Mennonites  in  Holland  escaped  theological  criti- 
cism by  disclaiming  to  be  a  church,  and  calling  their 
institution  a  college,  and  themselves  "  CoUegiants." 
All  the  Mennonites  asked  was  to  be  let  alone.  They 
were  plain,  unpretentious  people,  who  worked  hard, 
lived  frugally,  refused  to  make  oaths,  to  accept  civil 
office,  or  to  go  to  war.  They  are  a  variant  of  the  impulse 
that  makes  Quakers  and  all  those  peculiar  people  known 


130 SPINOZA 

as  primitive  Christians,  who  mark  the  swinging  of  the 
pendulum  from  pride  and  pretense  to  simplicity  and  a 
life  of  modest  usefulness. 

The  sincerity,  truthfulness  and  virtue  of  the  Mennon- 
ites  so  impressed  itself  upon  even  the  ruthless  Corsican, 
that  he  made  them  exempt  from  conscription. 
Before  Spinoza  was  twenty,  he  had  come  into  ac- 
quaintanceship with  these  plain  people.  His  relation- 
ship with  the  rabbis  and  learned  men  of  Israel  had 
given  him  a  culture  that  the  Mennonites  did  not  pos- 
sess ;  but  these  plain  people,  by  the  earnestness  of  their 
lives,  showed  him  that  the  science  of  theology  was  not 
a  science  at  all.  Nobody  understands  theology — it  is 
not  meant  to  be  understood — it  is  for  belief.  Spinoza 
compared  the  Mennonites,  who  confessed  they  knew 
nothing,  but  hoped  much,  to  the  rabbis,  who  pretended 
they  knew  all.  His  praise  of  the  Mennonites,  and  his 
criticisms  of  the  growing  love  for  power  in  Judaism 
were  carried  to  the  Jewish  authorities  by  some  young 
men  who  had  come  to  him  in  the  guise  of  learners. 
Moreover,  the  report  was  abroad  that  he  was  to  marry 
a  Gentile — the  daughter  of  Van  den  Ende,  the  infidel. 
Q  On  order,  he  appeared  at  the  synagogue,  and  de- 
fended his  position.  His  ability  in  argument,  his  knowl- 
edge of  Jewish  law,  his  insight  into  the  lessons  of 
history,  were  alarming  to  the  assembled  rabbis.  The 
young  man  w^as  quiet,  gentle,  but  firm.  He  expressed 
the  belief  that  God  might  possibly  have  revealed  Him- 
self to  other  peoples  beside  the  Jews. 


SPINOZA 131 

"  Then  you  are  not  a  Jew !  "  was  the  answer.  **  Yes,  I 
am  a  Jew,  and  I  love  my  faith." 
"  But  it  is  not  all  to  you  ?  " 

**  I  confess  that  occasionally  I  have  found  what  seems 
to  be  truth  outside  of  the  Law." 

The  rabbis  tore  their  raiment  in  mingled  rage  and  sur- 
prise at  the  young  man's  temerity. 
Spinoza  did  not  withdraw  from  the  Jewish  Congre- 
gation— he  was  thrust  out.  Moreover,  a  fanatical  Jew, 
in  the  warmth  of  his  religious  zeal,  attempted  to  kill 
him.  Spinoza  escaped,  his  clothing  cut  through  by  a 
dagger  thrust,  close  to  the  heart. 

The  curse  of  Israel  was  upon  him — his  own  brothers 
and  sisters  refused  him  shelter,  his  father  turned 
against  him,  and  again  was  the  icy  unkindness  of  kins- 
men made  manifest.  The  tribe  of  Spinoza  lives  in  his- 
tory, saved  from  the  fell  clutch  of  oblivion  by  the  man 
it  denied  with  an  oath  and  pushed  in  bitterness  from 
its  heart.  Spinoza  fled  to  his  friends,  the  Mennonites, 
plain  market- gardeners  who  lived  a  few  miles  out  of  the 
city  0-  ^ 

Spinoza  had  not  meant  to  leave  the  Jews — the  racial 
instinct  was  strong  in  him,  and  the  pride  of  his  people 
colored  his  character  to  the  last.  But  the  attempts  to 
bribe  him  and  coerce  him  into  a  following  of  fanatical 
law,  when  this  law  did  not  appeal  to  his  common  sense, 
forced  him  into  a  position  that  his  enemies  took  for 
innate  perversity.  When  an  eagle  is  hatched  in  a  barn- 
yard brood  and  mounts  on  soaring  pinions  toward  the 


132 SPINOZA 

sun,  it  is  always  cursed  and  vilified  because  it  does  not 
remain  at  home  and  scratch  in  the  compost.  Its  Right 
skyward  is  construed  as  proof  of  its  vile  nature. 
How  can  people  who  do  not  think,  and  cannot  think, 
and  therefore  have  no  thoughts  to  express,  sympathize 
with  one  whose  highest  joy  comes  from  the  expression 
of  his  thought  ? 

Deprive  a  thinker  of  the  privilege  to  think  and  you  take 
from  him  his  life.  The  joy  of  existence  lies  in  self-ex- 
pression. What  if  we  should  order  the  painter  to  quit 
his  canvas,  the  sculptor  to  lay  aside  his  tools,  the 
farmer  to  leave  the  soil  ?  Do  these  things,  and  you  do 
no  more  than  you  do  when  you  force  a  thinker  to  follow 
in  the  groove  that  dead  men  have  furrowed.  The  thirst 
for  knowledge  must  be  slaked  or  the  soul  sickens  and 
slow  death  follows. 

In  Spinoza's  time  the  literature  of  Greece  and  Rome 
^vas  locked  in  the  Latin  language,  which  the  Jews  were 
forbidden  to  acquire.  Young  Spinoza  longed  to  know 
what  Plato,  Aristotle,  Cicero,  Seneca  and  Virgil  had 
taught,  but  these  authors  were  considered  anathema 
by  the  rabbinical  councils.  Spinoza  desired  to  be  hon- 
est, and  so  asked  for  a  special  dispensation  in  his  favor, 
as  he  was  to  be  a  teacher — could  he  study  the  Latin 
language  ? 

And  the  answer  was,  **  Read  your  Joshua,  first  chap- 
ter and  eighth  verse,  *  This  book  of  the  law  shall  not 
depart  out  of  thy  mouth ;  but  thou  shalt  meditate  therein 
day  and  night.'  " 


SPINOZA 133 

From  this  time  on  Spinoza  was  more  or  less  under  the 
ban,  and  rumors  of  his  heresy  were  rife.  It  is  possible 
if  it  had  not  been  for  one  person,  that  the  growing  de- 
sire for  knowledge,  the  reaching  out  for  better  things, 
the  dissatisfaction  with  his  environment  might  have 
passed  in  safety  and  the  restless  young  rabbi  slipped 
back  into  the  conventional  Jew.  Youth  always  has  its 
periods  of  unrest — sometimes  more,  sometimes  less. 
C^  Spinoza  had  made  the  acquaintance  of  Van  den  Ende, 
a  teacher  of  Greek  and  Latin,  an  erratic,  argumentative 
rationalist,  who  had  his  say  on  all  topics  of  the  time, 
and  fixed  his  place  in  history  by  being  shot  as  a  revo- 
lutionary, just  outside  the  walls  of  the  Bastile. 
But  at  this  time  Van  den  Ende  was  fairly  prosperous 
and  Amsterdam  was  the  freest  city  in  Christendom. 
Q,  Van  den  Ende  had  a  daughter,  Clara  Maria,  a  little 
younger  than  Spinoza,  who  surely  was  a  most  superior 
woman.  She  was  the  companion  of  her  father  in  his 
studies.  It  speaks  well  for  the  father  and  it  speaks  well 
for  the  daughter  that  they  were  comrades  and  that  his 
highest  thought  was  expressed  to  her.  I  can  conceive 
of  no  finer  joy  coming  to  a  man  than,  as  his  hair 
whitens,  to  have  a  daughter  who  understands  him  at 
his  best,  who  enters  into  his  life,  sympathizes  with 
his  ideals,  ministers  to  his  mental  needs,  who  is  his 
companion  and  friend.  Only  a  great  man  ever  has  such 
a  daughter.  Madame  de  Stael,  who  delighted  in  being 
called  "the  daughter  of  Necker,"  was  such  a  woman, 
and  the  splendor  of  her  mind  was  no  less  her  father's 


134 SPINOZA 

glory  than  was  the  fact  that  he  was  the  greatest  finan- 
cier of  his  time. 

Clara  Van  den  Ende  was  her  father's  helper  and  com- 
panion, and  when  he  was  busied  in  other  tasks  she 
took  charge  of  his  classes. 

Auerbach  has  written  a  charming  story  with  Clara  Van 
den  Ende  and  Spinoza  as  a  central  theme.  In  the  tale 
is  pictured  with  skilful  psychology  the  awakening  of 
the  sleeping  soul  of  Spinoza  as  he  was  introduced  from 
a  cheerless  home,  devoid  of  art  and  freedom,  into  the 
beauties  of  undraped  Greece  and  the  fine  atmosphere 
of  a  forum  where  nothing  human  was  considered  alien. 
Q  From  a  love  for  Virgil,  Cicero  and  Horace,  to  a  love 
for  each  other,  was  a  very  natural  sequence.  A  growing 
indifference  for  the  censure  of  Judaism  was  quite  a 
natural  result.  Auerbach  would  have  us  believe  that 
no  man  alone  ever  stood  out  against  the  revilings  of 
kinsmen  and  the  stupidity  of  sectarians :  we  move  in 
the  line  of  least  resistance  and  only  a  very  great  passion 
makes  it  possible  for  a  man  to  calmly  face  the  con- 
tumely of  an  angry  world. 

Zangwill,  in  his  vivid  sketch,  "  The  Maker  of  Lenses," 
makes  this  single  love  episode  in  the  life  of  Spinoza 
the  controlling  impulse  of  his  life,  probably  reasoning 
on  the  premise  that  men  who  mark  epochs  are  ever 
and  always,  without  exception,  those  with  the  love  na- 
ture strongly  implanted  in  their  hearts.  So  thoroughly 
does  Zangwill  believe  in  the  one  passion  of  Spinoza's 
life,  that  a  score  of  years  after  the  chief  incident  of  it 


SPINOZA 135 

had  transpired,  he  pictures  the  philosopher  trembling 
at  mention  of  the  woman's  name,  coughing  to  conceal 
his  agitation  and  clutching  the  door  post  for  support. 
And  this  a  man  who  smilingly  faced  a  mob  that  howled 
for  his  life,  and  was  only  moved  to  philosophize  on  the 
nature  of  human  intellect  when  a  flying  stone  grazed 
his  cheek ! 

But  the  lady  had  ambitions — the  lens-maker  was  pen- 
niless, and  probably  always  would  be — his  passion  was 
passive — he  lacked  the  show  and  dash  that  made  other 
women  jealous.  And  so  Oldenburg,  a  rival  with  love 
and  jewels,  won  the  heart  that  could  not  be  won  by 
love  alone.  That  the  lady  soon  knew  she  had  erred  did 
not  help  her  case — Spinoza  loved  his  ideal,  and  he  had 
thought  it  was  the  woman. 


FOLLOW  Zangwill's  stories  of  the  Ghetto  and 
your  heart  is  wrung  by  the  injustice,  cruelty  and 
inhumanity  visited  upon  the  Jews  by  the  people 
who  v/orship  a  Jew  as  God  and  make  daily  supplica- 
tions to  a  Jewess.  But  read  between  the  lines  and  you 
will  see  that  Israel  Zangwill,  child  of  the  Ghetto,  knows 
that  the  Peculiar  People  are  peculiar  through  persecu- 
tion, and  not  necessarily  so  through  innate  nature. 
Zangwill  knows  that  no  religion  is  pure  excepting  in 
its  stage  of  persecution,  and  that  Judaism,  grown  rich 
and  powerful,  would  oppress  and  has  oppressed.  Mar- 
tyr and  persecutor  shift  places  easily. 


136 SPINOZA 

The  Jew  arrives  in  a  city  at  night  and  in  the  morning 
takes  down  the  shutters  and  is  doing  business.  The 
Jew  winds  his  way  into  the  life  of  every  city  and  be- 
comes at  once  an  integral  part  of  it.  A  part  yet  separate 
and  distinct,  for  his  social  and  religious  life  is  not 
colored  by  his  environment. 

Children  imitate  unconsciously.  The  golden  rule  is  not 
natural  to  children,  it  has  to  be  taught  them.  They  do 
unto  others  as  others  have  done  unto  them,  and  have 
no  question  as  to  right  or  wrong.  "We  are  all  children, 
and  have  to  think  hard  before  we  are  conscious  of  any 
feeling  of  the  brotherhood  of  man.  As  soon  as  the  Jews 
relaxed  in  Amsterdam — got  their  breath,  and  felt  secure, 
they  did  unto  others  as  they  had  been  done  by — they 
persecuted. 

A  Jew  must  be  a  Jew,  and  as  they  had  been  watched 
with  suspicion  in  Spain  and  Portugal  by  the  Christians, 
so  now  they  watched  each  other  for  heresies.  They 
compelled  strictest  obedience  to  every  form  and  cere- 
mony. To  the  Jew  the  Law  forms  the  firmament  above 
and  the  earth  beneath.  All  is  law  to  him,  and  his  part 
and  work  in  this  life  is  obedience  to  law. 
The  Jewish  religion  is  a  concrete,  unbroken  mass  of 
laws.  The  Jew  is  bounded  on  the  east  by  law ;  on  the 
north  by  law ;  on  the  west  by  law ;  on  the  south  by  law. 
There  are  set  rules  and  laws  that  govern  his  getting 
up,  his  going  to  bed,  his  eating,  drinking,  sleeping,  and 
praying.  There  is  no  phase  of  human  relationship  that 
is  not   covered  by   the    Mishna   and   Gemara.  Being 


SPINOZA 137 

learned  in  the  Lraw  means  being  learned  in  the  proper 
way  to  kill  chickens,  to  dress  ducks,  wear  your  vest- 
ments, go  to  prayers  and  what  to  say  when  you  meet 
two  Christians  in  an  alley.  If  a  Jew  quarrels  with  a 
neighbor  and  goes  to  his  Rabbi  for  advice,  the  learned 
man  gets  down  his  Talmud  and  finds  the  page.  The 
relation  of  wife  and  husband,  child  and  parent,  brother 
and  sister,  lover  and  sweetheairt,  are  covered  by  la^v, 
fixed,  immovable.  The  learned  men  of  Judah  are  men 
learned  in  the  Law,  not  learned  in  the  science  of  life, 
and  common  sense.  When  these  learned  men  meet 
they  argue  for  six  days  and  nights  together  as  to  in- 
terpretations of  the  Law  concerning  whether  it  is  right 
to  make  a  fire  in  your  cook-stove  on  the  Sabbath  if  a 
Christian  is  starving  for  food  on  your  doorstep,  or  what 
will  become  of  you  if  you  eat  pork  to  save  your  life. 
Rationzil  Jews  are  those  who  do  what  they  think  is 
right,  but  Orthodox  Jews  are  those  who  do  what  the 
Law  prescribes.  When  Jesus  plucked  the  ears  of  corn 
on  the  Sabbath  day,  he  proved  himself  a  Rational  Jew 
— he  set  his  own  opinion  higher  than  Law  and  thereby 
made  himself  an  outcast.  Jewish  Law  provides  curd- 
ling curses  for  just  such  offenses. 

Plato's  Republic  was  a  scheme  of  life  regulated  abso- 
lutely by  law;  every  contingency  ^vas  provided  for. 
And  Plato's  plan  was  founded  on  the  hypothesis  that 
it  is  the  duty  of  wise  men  to  do  the  thinking  and  regu- 
late the  conduct  of  those  who  are  supposed  not  to  be 
wise   enough  to  think  and  act  for  themselves.  But 


138 SPINOZA 

Plato's  idea  lacked  the  "Thus  saith  the  Lord,"  with 
which  Moses  and  Aaron  enforced  their  edicts.  So 
Plato's  Republic  is  still  on  paper,  for  no  set  of  rules 
minutely  regulating  conduct  has  ever  been  enforced 
excepting  as  the  ruler  made  his  subjects  believe  he 
received  his  instructions  direct  from  God. 
Yet  all  the  Jewish  Laws  are  founded  with  an  eye  to  a 
sanitary  and  hygienic  good — they  are  built  on  the  basis 
of  expediency.  And  that  rule  of  the  Gemara  ^vhich  pro- 
vides that  if  you  have  gravy  on  the  table,  you  cannot 
also  have  butter,  without  sin,  seems  more  of  a  move  in 
the  direction  of  economics  than  a  matter  of  ethics.  Laws 
are  good  for  the  people  who  believe  that  a  blind  obedi- 
ence to  a  good  thing  is  better  than  to  work  your  way 
alone  and  find  out  for  yourself  what  is  best  and  right. 
The  Jewish  Law  is  based,  like  all  religious  codes,  on 
the  assumption  that  man  by  nature  is  vile,  and  really 
prefers  wrong  to  right. 

The  thought  that  all  men  prefer  the  good,  and  think  at 
the  moment  they  are  doing  what  is  best,  no  matter 
what  they  do,  was  first  sharply  and  clearly  expressed 
by  Spinoza.  Truth,  he  said,  could  only  be  reached 
through  freedom — a  man  must  even  have  the  privilege 
of  thinking  wrong  so  long  as  his  actions  do  not  jeop- 
ardize the  life  and  immediate  safety  of  others. 
For  a  people  whose  every  act  is  governed  by  fixed  la^vs 
there  can  be  no  progression.  Mistakes  are  the  rungs  of 
the  ladder  by  which  we  reach  the  skies.  The  man  who 
allows  the  dead  to  regulate  his  life,  and  accepts  their 


SPINOZA 139 

thinking  as  final,  satisfied  to  repeat  what  he  is  taught, 
remains  forever  in  the  lowlands.  His  wings  are  leaden. 
Q  The  Jews — most  law-bound  and  priest-ridden  of  all 
peoples — are  at  home  everywhere  because  they  have 
no  home.  They  mix  in  the  life  of  every  nation  and  re- 
main forever  separate  and  apart.  They  will  run  with 
you,  ride  with  you,  trade  with  you,  but  they  will  not 
eat  with  you  nor  pray  with  you.  They  build  no  Altars 
to  the  Unknown  God,  out  of  courtesy  to  visitors  and 
guests  from  distant  climes.  Mohammedans  recognize 
the  divinity  of  Jesus,  the  Buddhists  look  upon  him  as 
one  of  many  Christs,  the  Universalist  sees  good  in 
every  faith,  but  the  Jew  regards  all  other  religions  than 
his  own  as  pestilence.  If  by  chance,  or  in  the  line  of 
business,  he  finds  himself  in  a  heathen  temple  or 
Christian  Church,  his  Gemara  orders  that  he  shall 
present  himself  at  his  own  temple  for  purification. 
Read  Leviticus,  Numbers  and  Deuteronomy,  and  you 
behold  on  every  page  curses,  revilings,  threats  and 
bitter  scorn  for  all  outside  the  pale.  Orders  by  Jehovah 
to  burn,  kill  and  utterly  destroy  are  frequent.  And  we 
must  remember  that  every  people  make  their  god  in 
their  own  image.  A  man's  God  is  himself  at  his  best; 
his  devil  is  himself  at  his  worst. 

The  very  expression,  "The  Chosen  People,"  would  be 
an  insult  to  every  man  outside  the  pale,  were  it  not 
such  a  petulant  and  childish  boast  that  its  serious  as- 
sumption makes  us  smile. 
Well  does  Moses  Mendelssohn,  the  Jew,  say,  **  The 


140 SPINOZA 

Ghetto  is  an  arrangement  first  contrived  by  Jews  for 
keeping  infidels  out  of  a  sacred  precinct.  When  the  in- 
fidels were  strong  enough  they  turned  the  tables  and 
forbade  the  Jews  to  leave  their  Ghetto  except  at  certain 
hours.  For  the  misery,  poverty  and  squalor  of  the 
Ghetto  the  Jew  is  not  to  blame — if  he  could,  he  would 
have  the  Ghetto  a  place  of  opulence,  beauty  and  all  that 
makes  for  the  good.  Every  undesirable  thing  he  would 
bestow  on  the  outsider.  In  the  twilight  days  of  Jewish 
power,  the  Jew  with  bigotry,  arrogance  and  intolerance 
unsurpassed,  regulated  the  infidels  and  fixed  their  go- 
ings and  comings  as  they  now  do  his,  and  he  would 
do  it  again  if  he  had  the  power.  The  Jew  never  changes 
— once  a  Jew  always  a  Jew." 

This  was  written  by  a  man  who  was  not  only  a  Jew, 
but  a  man.  He  was  a  Jew  in  pride  of  race — in  racial 
instinct,  but  he  was  great  enough  to  know  that  all  men 
are  God's  children,  and  that  to  setup  a  fixed,  dogmatic 
standard  regulating  every  act  of  life  has  its  serious 
penalties.  He  was  a  Jew  so  big  that  he  knew  that  the 
cruelty  and  inhumanity  visited  upon  the  Jews  by 
Christians  was  first  taught  to  these  Christians  by  Jews 
—it  is  all  in  the  Old  Testament.  The  villainy  you  have 
taught  me  I  will  execute.  It  shall  go  hard,  but  I  will 
better  the  instruction. 

The  Christians  who  had  persecuted  Jews  were  really 
orthodox  Jews  in  disguise,  and  were  actuated  more  by 
the  Jewish  Law  expressed  in  the  Old  Testament,  than 
by  the  life  of  Jesus,  who  placed  man  above  the  Sabbath 


SPINOZA 141 

and  taught  that  the  good  is  that  which  serves.  Q,  And 
so  Benedict  Spinoza,  the  Rabbi,  gentle,  spiritual,  kind, 
heir  to  the  Jewish  faith,  learned  in  all  the  refinements 
of  Jewish  Law,  knowing  minutely  the  history  of  the 
race,  knowing  that  for  which  the  curses  of  Judaism 
were  reserved,  perceiving  with  unblinking  eyes  the  ab- 
surdity and  folly  of  all  dogmatic  belief,  gradually  with- 
drew from  practicing  and  following  "Law,"  preferring 
his  own  common  sense.  There  were  threats,  then 
attempts  to  bribe,  and  again  threats  and  finally  excom- 
munication and  curses  so  terrible  that  if  they  were 
carried  out,  a  man  would  walk  the  earth  an  exile  — 
unknown  by  brothers  and  sisters,  shunned  by  the 
mother  that  gave  him  birth,  a  moral  leper  to  his  father, 
despised,  rejected,  turned  away,  spit  upon  by  every 
being  of  his  kind. 
And  here  is  the  document : 

By  the  sentence  of  the  angels,  by  the  decree  of  the 
saints,  we  anathematize,  cut  off,  curse,  and  execrate 
Baruch  Spinoza,  in  the  presence  of  these  sacred 
books  with  the  six  hundred  and  thirteen  precepts  which 
are  written  therein,  with  the  anathema  wherewith 
Joshua  anathematized  Jericho ;  with  the  cursing  where- 
with Elisha  cursed  the  children ;  and  with  all  the  curs- 
ings which  are  written  in  the  Book  of  the  Law ;  cursed 
be  he  by  day,  and  cursed  by  night;  cursed  when  he 
lieth  down,  and  cursed  when  he  riseth  up ;  cursed  when 
he  goeth  out,  and  cursed  when  he  cometh  in ;  the  Lord 
pardon  him  never ;  the  wrath  and  fury  of  the  Lord  burn 
upon  this  man,  and  bring  upon  him  all  the  curses  which 
are  written  in  the  Book  of  the  Law.  The  Lord  blot  out 


142 SPINOZA 

his  name  under  heaven.  The  Lord  set  him  apart  for 
destruction  from  all  the  tribes  of  Israel,  with  all  the 
curses  of  the  firmament  which  are  written  in  the  Book 
of  the  Law.  There  shall  no  one  speak  to  him,  no  man 
write  to  him,  no  man  show  him  any  kindness,  no  man 
stay  under  the  same  roof  with  him,  no  man  come  nigh 
him  fff  iff 


WHEN  the  Jewish  congregation  had  placed  its 
ban  upon  Spinoza,  he  dropped  the  Jewish 
name  Baruch,  for  the  Latin,  Benedictus.  In 
this  action  he  tokened  his  frame  of  mind :  he  was  going 
to  persist  in  his  study  of  the  Latin  language,  and  his 
new  name  stood  for  peace  or  blessing,  just  as  the  other 
had,  being  essentially  the  same  as  our  word  benediction. 
The  man's  purpose  was  firm.  To  perfect  himself  in 
Latin,  he  began  a  study  of  Descartes'  ••Meditations," 
and  this  led  to  proving  the  Cartesian  philosophy  by  a 
geometrical  formula.  In  his  quiet  home  among  the 
simple  Mennonites,  five  miles  from  Amsterdam,  there 
gradually  grew  up  around  him  a  body  of  students  to 
whom  he  read  his  writings.  The  Cartesian  philosophy 
swings  around  the  proposition  that  only  through  uni- 
versal doubt  can  we  at  last  reach  truth.  Spinoza  soon 
went  beyond  this  and  made  his  plea  for  faith  in  a  uni- 
versal Good. 

Five  years  went  by — years  of  work  at  his  lenses,  help- 
ing his  friends  in  their  farm  work,  and  several  hours 
daily  devoted  to  study  and  writing.  Spinoza's  manu- 


SPINOZA 143 

scripts  were  handed  around  by  his  pupils.  He  wrote 
for  them,  and  in  making  truth  plain  to  them  he  made 
it  clear  to  himself.  The  Jews  at  Amsterdam  kept  track 
of  his  doings  and  made  charges  to  the  Protestant  au- 
thorities to  the  effect  that  Spinoza  was  guilty  of  treason, 
and  his  presence  a  danger  to  the  State.  Spies  were 
about,  and  their  presence  becoming  known  to  the  Men- 
nonites,  caused  uneasiness.  To  relieve  his  friends  of  a 
possible  unpleasant  situation,  the  gentle  philosopher 
packed  up  his  scanty  effects  and  moved  away.  He  went 
to  the  village  of  Voorburg,  two  miles  from  The  Hague. 
Q  Here  he  lived  for  seven  years,  often  for  six  months 
not  going  farther  than  three  miles  from  home.  He 
studied,  worked  and  wrote,  and  his  writings  were  sent 
out  to  his  few  friends  who  circulated  them  among 
friends  of  theirs,  and  in  time  the  manuscripts  came 
back  soiled  and  dog-eared,  proof  that  some  one  had 
read  them.  Persecution  binds  human  hearts,  and  at  this 
time  there  was  a  brotherhood  of  thinkers  throughout 
the  capitals  and  University  towns  of  Europe.  Spinoza's 
name  became  known  gradually  to  these — they  grew  to 
look  for  his  monthly  contribution,  and  in  many  places 
when  his  manuscript  arrived  little  bands  of  earnest 
students  would  meet,  and  the  manuscript  would  be 
read  and  discussed.  The  interdict  placed  on  free  thought 
made  it  attractive.  Spinoza  became  recognized  by  the 
esoteric  few  as  one  of  the  world's  great  thinkers,  al- 
though the  good  people  with  whom  he  lived  knew  him 
only  as  a  model  lodger,  who  kept  regular  hours  and 


144 SPINOZA 

made  little  trouble.  Occasionally  visitors  -would  come 
from  a  distance  and  remain  for  hours  discussing  such 
abstract  themes  as  the  freedom  of  the  will  or  the  nature 
of  the  over-soul.  And  these  visitors  caused  the  rustic 
neighbors  to  grow  curious,  and  we  find  Spinoza  moving 
into  the  city  and  renting  a  modest  back  room.  By  a 
curious  chance,  his  landlady,  fifty  years  before,  had 
been  a  servant  in  the  household  of  Grotius,  and  once 
had  locked  that  great  man  in  a  trunk  and  escorted  him, 
right  side  up,  across  the  border  into  Switzerland  to 
escape  the  heresy-hunters  who  were  looking  for  human 
kindling.  This  kind  landlady,  now  grown  old,  and  living 
largely  in  the  past,  saw  points  of  resemblance  between 
her  philosophic  boarder  and  the  great  Grotius,  and 
soon  waxed  boastful  to  the  neighbors.  Spinoza  noticed 
that  he  was  being  pointed  out  on  the  streets.  His  record 
had  followed  him.  The  Jews  hated  him  because  he  was 
a  renegade ;  the  Christians  hated  him  because  he  was 
a  Jew,  and  both  Catholics  and  Protestants  shunned 
him  when  they  ought  not,  and  greeted  him  with  howls 
when  they  should  have  let  him  alone. 
He  again  moved  his  lodging  to  the  suburbs  of  the  city, 
where  he  lived  with  the  family  of  Van  der  Spijck,  a 
worthy  Dutch  painter  who  smoked  his  pipe  in  calm  in- 
difference to  the  Higher  Criticism.  For  their  quiet  and 
studious  lodger  Van  der  Spijck  and  his  wife  had  a  pro- 
found regard.  They  did  not  understand  him,  but  they 
believed  in  him.  Often  he  would  go  to  church  with 
them  and  coming  home  would  discuss  the  sermon  with 


SPINOZA         M5 

them  at  length.  The  Lutheran  pastor  who  came  to  call 
on  the  family  invited  Spinoza  to  join  his  flock,  and  they 
calmly  discussed  the  questions  of  baptism  and  regener- 
ation by  faith  together ;  but  genius  only  expresses  itself 
to  genius,  and  the  pastor  went  away  mystified.  Van 
der  Spijck  did  not  produce  great  art,  yet  his  pictures 
are  now  in  demand  because  he  was  the  kind  and  loyal 
friend  of  Spinoza,  and  his  heart,  not  his  art,  fixes  his 
place  in  history, 

In  his  sketch,  Zangwill  has  certain  of  his  old  friends, 
members  of  the  Van  den  Ende  family,  hunt  out  the  phi- 
losopher in  his  obscure  lodgings  and  pay  him  a  social 
visit.  Then  it  was  that  he  turned  pale,  and  stammeringly 
tried  to  conceal  his  agitation  at  mention  of  the  name  of 
the  only  ^voman  he  had  ever  loved. 
The  image  of  that  one  fine  flaming  up  of  divine  passion 
followed  him  to  the  day  of  his  death.  It  was  too  sacred 
for  him  to  discuss  —  he  avoided  women,  kept  out  of 
society,  and  forever  in  his  sad  heart  there  burned  a 
shrine  to  the  ideal.  And  so  he  lived,  separate  and  apart. 
A  single  little  room  sufiiced — the  work-bench  where 
he  made  his  lenses  near  the  window,  and  near  at  hand 
the  table  covered  with  manuscript  where  he  wrote. 
Renan  says  that  when  he  died,  aged  forty-three,  his 
passing  was  like  a  sigh,  he  had  lived  so  quietly — so  few^ 
knew  him — there  were  no  earthly  ties  to  break. 
The  worthy  Van  der  Spijcks,  plain,  honest  people,  had 
invited  him  to  go  to  church  with  them.  He  smilingly 
excused  himself — he  had  thoughts  he  must  write  out 


146 SPINOZA 

ere  they  escaped.  When  the  good  man  and  his  wife 
returned  in  an  hour,  their  lodger  was  dead. 
A  tablet  on  the  house  marks  the  spot,  and  but  a  short 
distance  away  in  the  open  square  sits  his  form  in  death- 
less bronze,  pensively  writing  out  an  idea  which  we 
can  only  guess — or  is  it  a  last  love-letter  to  the  woman 
to  whom  he  gave  his  heart  and  who  pushed  from  her 
the  gift  ? 


SPINOZA  had  courage,  yet  great  gentleness  of 
disposition.  His  habit  of  mind  was  conciliatory: 
if  strong  opinions  were  expressed  in  his  presence 
concerning  some  person  or  thing,  he  usually  found  some 
good  to  say  of  the  person  or  an  excuse  for  the  thing. 
He  was  one  of  the  most  unselfish  men  in  history  — 
money  was  nothing  to  him,  save  as  it  might  minister 
to  his  very  few  immediate  wants  or  the  needs  of  others. 
Q  He  smilingly  refused  a  pension  offered  him  by  a 
French  courtier  if  he  would  but  dedicate  a  book  to  the 
King ;  and  a  legacy  left  him  by  an  admiring  student, 
Simon  de  Vries,  was  declined  for  the  reason  that  it  was 
too  much  and  he  did  not  wish  the  care  of  it.  Later,  he 
compromised  with  the  heirs  by  accepting  an  income 
of  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  dollars  a  year.  "  How 
unreasonable,"  he  exclaimed,  "  they  want  me  to  accept 
five  hundred  florins  a  year — I  told  them  I  would  take 
three  hundred,  but  I  will  not  be  burdened  by  a  stiver 
more."  If  he  was  financially  free  from  the  necessity  of 


SPINOZA 147 

earning  his  living  at  his  trade,  he  feared  the  quality  of 
his  thought  might  be  diluted.  "You  cannot  think  in- 
tently and  intensely  all  of  the  time.  Those  who  try  it 
never  are  able  to  dive  deep  nor  soar  high.  =f=  *  *  Good 
digestion  demands  a  certain  amount  of  coarse  food — 
refined  and  condensed  aliment  alone  kills.  Man  should 
work  and  busy  himself  with  the  commonplace,  rest 
himself  for  his  flight,  and  when  the  moment  of  trans- 
figuration comes,  make  the  best  of  it." 
All  he  asked  was  to  be  given  the  privilege  to  work  and 
to  think.  As  for  expressing  his  thoughts,  he  made  no 
public  addresses  and  during  his  life  only  one  of  his  books 
was  printed.  This  was   the  «*Tractatus  Theologico- 
Politicus,"  which  mentioned  "Hamburg"  on  the  title 
page,  but  with  the  author's  name  wisely  omitted.  Trite 
enough  now  are  the  propositions  laid  down — that  God 
is  everywhere  and  that  man  is  brother  to  the  tree,  the 
rock,  the  flower.  Emerson  states  the  case  in  his  **  Over- 
Soul"  &  "Spiritual  Laws"  in  the  true,  calm  Spinozistic 
style — as  if  the  gentle  Jew  had  come  back  to  earth  and 
dictated  his  thought,  refined,  polished  and  smooth  as 
one  of  his  own  little  lenses,  to  the  man  of  Concord. 
Benedictus  Concordia,  blessing  and  peace  be  with  thee ! 
Q,  But  the  lynx-eyed  censors  soon  discovered  this  single, 
solitary  book  of  Spinoza's,  and  although  they  failed  to 
locate  the  author,  Spinoza  had  the  satisfaction  of  see- 
ing the  work  placed  on  the  Index  and  a  general  inter- 
dict issued  against  it  by  Christendom  and  Judea  as 
well.  It  was  really  of  some  importance.   It  was   so 


148 SPINOZA 

thoroughly  in  demand  that  it  still  circulated  with  false 
title  pages.  In  the  Lenox  Library,  New  York,  is  a  copy 
of  the  first  edition,  finely  bound,  and  lettered  thus :  "  A 
Treatise  on  the  Sailing  of  Ships  against  the  W^ind," 
which  shows  the  straits  booksellers  were  put  to  in 
evading  the  censors,  and  also  reveals  a  touch  of  wit 
that  doubtless  was  appreciated  by  the  Elect. 
His  modesty,  patience,  kindness  and  freedom  from  all 
petty  whim  and  prejudice  set  Spinoza  apart  as  a 
marked  man.  W^ithal  he  was  eminently  religious,  and 
the  reference  to  him  by  Novalis  as  "the  God-intoxi- 
cated man"  seems  especially  applicable  to  one  who 
saw  God  in  everything. 

Renan  said  at  the  dedication  of  The  Hague  monument 
to  Spinoza,  '•  Since  the  days  of  Epictetus  and  Marcus 
Aurelius  we  have  not  seen  a  life  so  profoundly  filled 
with  the  sentiment  of  the  divine." 

"When  walking  along  the  streets  of  The  Hague  and 
coarse  voices  called  after  him  in  guttural,  *♦  Kill  the 
renegade!"  he  said  calmly,  "  We  must  remember  that 
these  men  are  expressing  the  essence  of  their  being, 
just  as  I  express  the  essence  of  mine." 


SPINOZA  taught  that  the  love  of  God  is  the  su- 
preme good ;  that  virtue  is  its  own  reward,  and 
folly  its  own  punishment;  and  that  every  one 
ought  to  love  his  neighbor  and  obey  the  civil  powers. 
QHe  made  no  enemies  except  by  his  opinions.  He  was 


SPINOZA     M9 

infinitely  patient,  sweet  in  temper— had  respect  for  all 
religions,  and  never  offended  by  parading  his  heresies 
in  the  faces  of  others. 

Nothing  but  the  kicks  of  scorn  and  the  contumely  that 
came  to  Spinoza  could  possibly  have  freed  him  to  the 
extent  he  was  free  from  Judaistic  bonds. 
He  had  disciples  who  called  him  •*  Master,"  and  who 
taught  him  nothing  but  patience  in  answering  their 
difficulties. 

One  is  amazed  at  the  hunger  of  the  mind  at  the  time 
of  Spinoza.  Men  seemed  to  think,  and  dare  to  grasp  for 
"  New  Thought"  to  a  marvelous  extent. 
Spinoza  says  that  "evil"  and  "good"  have  no  ob- 
jective reality,  but  are  merely  relative  to  our  feelings, 
and  that  "  evil"  in  particular  is  nothing  positive,  but  a 
privation  only,  or  non-existence. 

Spinoza  says  that  love  consecrates  every  indifferent 
particular  connected  with  the  object  of  affection.  Good 
is  that  which  we  certainly  know  to  be  useful  to  us.  Evil 
is  that  which  we  certainly  know  stands  in  the  way  of 
our  command  of  good. 

Good  is  that  which  helps.  Bad  is  that  which  hinders 
our  self-maintenance  and  active  powers. 
A  passage  from  Spinoza  which  well  reveals  his  habit 
of  thought  and  which  placed  the  censors  on  his  track 
runs  as  follows : 

The  ultimate  design  of  the  State  is  not  to  dominate 
men,  to  restrain  them  by  fear,  to  make  them  subject  to 
the  will  of  others,  but,  on  the  contrary,  to  permit  every 


150 SPINOZA 

one,  as  far  as  possible,  to  live  in  security.  That  is  to  say, 
to  preserve  intact  the  natural  right  which  is  his,  to  live 
without  being  harmed  himself  or  doing  harm  to  others. 
No,  I  say,  the  design  of  the  State  is  not  to  transform 
men  into  animals  or  automata  from  reasonable  beings ; 
its  design  is  to  arrange  matters  that  citizens  may  de- 
velop their  minds  and  bodies  in  security,  and  to  make 
free  use  of  their  reason.  The  true  design  of  the  State, 
then,  is  liberty.  ^A^hoever  would  respect  the  rights  of 
the  sovereign  ought  never  to  act  in  opposition  to  his 
decrees ;  but  each  has  a  right  to  think  as  he  pleases  and 
to  say  what  he  thinks,  provided  that  he  limits  himself 
to  speaking  and  to  teaching  in  the  name  of  pure  reason, 
and  that  he  does  not  attempt,  in  his  private  capacity, 
to  introduce  innovations  into  the  State.  For  example, 
a  citizen  demonstrates  that  a  certain  law  is  repugnant 
to  sound  reason,  and  believing  this,  he  thinks  it  ought 
to  be  abrogated.  If  he  submits  his  opinion  to  the  judg- 
ment of  the  sovereign,  to  which  alone  it  belongs  to 
establish  and  to  abolish  laws,  and  if,  in  the  meantime, 
he  does  nothing  contrary  to  law,  he  certainly  deserves 
well  of  the  State  as  being  a  good  citizen. 
Let  us  admit  that  it  is  possible  to  stifle  liberty  of  men 
and  to  impose  on  them  a  yoke,  to  the  point  that  they 
dare  not  even  murmur,  however  feebly,  ■without  the 
consent  of  the  sovereign,  never,  it  is  certain,  can  any 
one  hinder  them  from  thinking  according  to  their  own 
free  will.  What  follows  hence  ?  It  is  that  men  will  think 
one  way  and  speak  another;  that,  consequently,  good 
faith,  so  essential  a  virtue  to  a  State,  becomes  cor- 
rupted; that  adulation,  so  detestable,  and  perfidy,  shall 
be  held  in  honor,  bringing  in  their  train  a  decadence 
of  all  good  and  sound  habitudes.  What  can  be  more 
fatal  to  a  State  than  to  exile,  as  malcontents,  honest 
citizens,  simply  because  they  do  not  hold  the  opinion 


SPINOZA 


151 


of  the  multitude,  and  because  they  are  ignorant  of  the 
art  of  dissembling !  What  can  be  more  fatal  to  a  State 
than  to  treat  as  enemies  and  to  put  to  death  men  who 
have  committed  no  other  crime  than  that  of  thinking 
independently!  Behold,  then,  the  scaffold,  the  dread  of 
the  bad  man,  which  now  becomes  the  glorious  theatre 
where  tolerance  and  virtue  blaze  forth  in  all  their 
splendor,  and  covers  publicly  with  opprobium  the 
sovereign  majesty !  Assuredly,  there  is  but  one  thing 
which  that  spectacle  can  teach  us,  and  that  is  to  imi- 
tate these  noble  martyrs,  or,  if  we  fear  death,  to  become 
the  abject  flatterers  of  the  powerful.  Nothing  hence  can 
be  so  perilous  as  to  relegate  and  submit  to  divine  right 
things  which  are  purely  speculative,  and  to  impose 
laws  upon  opinions  which  are,  or  at  least  ought  to  be, 
subject  to  discussion  among  men.  If  the  right  of  the 
State  were  limited  to  repressing  acts,  and  speech  were 
allowed  impunity,  controversies  would  not  turn  so 
often  into  seditions. 


HERE  ENDETH  THE  LITTLE  JOURNEY  TO  THE  HOME 
OF  SPINOZA.  AS  WRITTEN  BY  ELBERT  HUBBARD. 
THE  BORDERS  AND  INITIALS  BEING  DESIGNED  BY 
ROYCROFT  ARTISTS,  PORTRAIT  BY  OTTO  J.  SCHNEIDER 
AND  THE  WHOLE  DONE  INTO  A  PRINTED  BOOK  BY  THE 
ROYCROFTERS  AT  THEIR  SHOP  IN  EAST  AURORA,  ERIE 
COUNTY,  NEW  YORK,  MAY  OF  THE  YEAR  MCMIV  #  ^  #  ^ 


IIMH' 


rAi  IP  I  f 


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UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A  A      000  339  513 


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